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Tagline: Just like real spies... Only furrier.
In the age-old battle between cats and dogs, one crazed feline has taken things a paw too far. Kitty Galore, formerly an agent for cat spy organization MEOWS, has gone rogue and hatched a diabolical plan to not only bring her canine enemies to heel, but take down her former kitty comrades and make the world her scratching post. Faced with this unprecedented threat, cats and dogs will be forced to join forces for the first time in history in an unlikely alliance to save themselves - and their humans.
In the eternal battle between cats and dogs, one crazed feline has just taken things a paw too far. Kitty Galore, a former elite agent for spy organization MEOWS, has gone rogue. In 48 hours, she plans to unleash a diabolical device designed to not only bring her canine enemies to heel but take down her former kitty comrades and make the world her scratching post.
Faced with this immediate and unprecedented threat, cats and dogs will be forced to work together for the first time in history in an unlikely alliance to save themselves—and their beloved humans—from global cat-astrophe.
 xAbout the Production
“You are about to experience something that no human has ever seen.”
People the world over adore their pets. And why not? Just look at them: a steady old sheepdog with a shaggy mop of hair, a soft, sweet purring kitten…such simple creatures, so loyal and loving, and all they ask from us is our protection and support.
Clueless humans! Guess again.
“That picture of domestic harmony is just what they want you to see,” claims director Brad Peyton, who happily exposes the true story of backyard politics in “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore.”
The truth is those placid furballs idling on the sofa and goofy mutts chasing their tails are really the paw-soldiers of a vast underground network of canine and feline covert agents, surveillance experts and four-legged assassins of every stripe. Heroes from both sides of the fence, they risk their lives to protect our way of life and uphold the balance of power between mankind’s most trusted and fiercely competitive animal companions: cats and dogs.
It’s the thin furry line between life as we know it and pure howling madness. “Once people bond with their pets and get to know their personalities, it’s easy to imagine them doing things when we’re not around,” Peyton suggests. “This movie is just an extension of that idea—that animals have their own secret lives. Of course, we take it a lot further; we have them using jet packs and rocket cars. But it all comes from that basic curiosity that I think most of us have had at one time or another, wondering what our cats and dogs really do all day. It’s why candid clips of animals caught in the act of being themselves are so popular on the Internet.”
Producer Andrew Lazar, who first introduced audiences worldwide to this battleground of paws and claws in the 2001 hit comedy “Cats & Dogs,” says, “The idea that these animals are living such actively outrageous lives right under our noses is what makes it so irresistible. Cats and dogs can save the world while people go about their business completely unaware of how close they came to disaster.”
With that in mind, the everyday activities of the average pet take on new meaning. Christina Applegate, who stars as the voice of MEOWS agent Catherine, says, “It’s absolutely absurd and fantastic, this whole secret high-tech world they have and yet it’s presented as perfectly normal. It’s as if all that other stuff they do—like purring and doing tricks, or tearing up the yard—is just designed to distract us from what’s really going on.”
And what’s really going on is nothing less than the endless war between two species at odds since their earliest ancestors sought out the first caveman’s campfire. But now, one renegade agent has upped the ante. Determined to not only break the bond between dogs and humans forever but also pit feline against feline, Kitty Galore’s bid for global domination could jeopardize the future of all creatures, four- and two-legged alike.
“We don’t mean to misrepresent our feline friends as all bad,” says producer Polly Johnsen. “It’s just this one cat who isn’t quite with the program. As a result, cats and dogs must unite against a common foe and, in fact, it’s another cat, Catherine, who emerges as a true hero by being the first to extend her paw to the other side.”
Longtime James Bond fan Brad Peyton likens this uneasy partnership to that of the classic cold-war era scenarios in which “Bond and MI-6 are forced to collaborate with the Russians to get the über-villain who’s threatening them both. They still don’t like each other, but somehow they make it work.”
Animals, Animatronics and Computer Animation
“When I say ‘Wag your tail,’ you ask ‘How hard?’”
With the exception of bird-brained Seamus and Kitty’s fearsome henchcat, Paws, the film’s leading four-legged roles are all played by flesh-and-fur animals—in combination with their animatronic doppelgangers and computer animation. Nevertheless, Andrew Lazar says, “Audiences shouldn’t be aware of what’s real and what isn’t. The technology has advanced in leaps and bounds since the effects in “Cats & Dogs” which were cutting-edge a decade ago.”
“Every shot has its complexity, with multiple layers requiring follow-up, so it’s been a fairly labor-intensive effort,” says Peyton of the project’s inherent challenges. “But that also meant I had more toys to play with.”
Though often claiming that he has little patience, the director’s commitment, plus his experience in stop-motion animation, suggests otherwise. In an unexpected way, that background proved helpful for his first time working with animals—the starting point for the entire process. “Animation teaches you to think through all the aspects of a scene in a way you don’t need to think about when directing people. People are aware of their eye-lines and motivation, they process the scene on their own; whereas, with animated characters and, I’ve learned, with animals, you have to do all of that for them.”
However, he acknowledges, the rewards are enormous, especially in that many of the film’s stars and supporting players were former shelter animals that he and renowned animal trainer Boone Narr discovered. Among those that Narr adopted and coached for the film are the tuxedo cat that plays Tab Lazenby, one of the Shepherds cast as Diggs, two Sheepdogs that tag-teamed as Sam, and four very sociable grey cats of unknown breed that rotated in the Catherine role after being found sharing a cage at a pet expo in Southern California.
“I was amazed at how well the cats take direction,” Peyton says. “If I put my cat on a leash, he’d just stare at me. Boone’s cats walk on leash, stay, and hit their marks. I was a little wary at first about what to expect. He said, ‘We can get just as much from a cat as we can from a dog,’ and I thought, ‘Yeah, sure.’ But it’s absolutely true.”
“A big surprise for me was seeing how one of the dogs playing Diggs looked disappointed at break time. He seemed sincerely bummed out that he wasn’t being called to the set,” says Johnsen.
Narr and his 20-member team trained approximately 100 animals for the film, under the supervision of an American Humane Association rep and according to guidelines that his company, Boone’s Animals for Hollywood, helped to establish.
Chris O’Donnell, whose character shares scenes with Diggs, recalled the old adage about never working with children or animals, saying, “My first shot involved a baby and a dog. The dog has to go over to a crib, pull a blanket up over the baby and walk away, and all I have to do is say a line. I’m thinking, ‘the baby is perfect, the dog is perfect…if I can’t get this right on the first take I’m going to look really bad.’ It was a lot of pressure!”
Animatronic effects supervisor Dave Barclay, a “Cats & Dogs” alumnus, considers his creations stunt doubles for the animal actors that can step in to accomplish the physically impossible. For the hero dog Diggs, he says, “The puppet has a plug under his chest so I can lie on the floor and reach my arm up into his head. Also, there are rods in his head so he can be controlled by puppeteers that will be in the shot but later removed by the digital crew.”
Designing A Pet-Centric World
Where a jacket with tails really means… a jacket with tails.
Brad Peyton and production designer Rusty Smith agreed that DOG headquarters should have a large central area that offers viewers an immediate sense of its depth and energy. “The bulk of it is contained in one very large subdivided central area that opens from the rocket car dock,” notes Smith.
When Diggs first arrives with Butch, the large view simultaneously takes in a gym, with dogs training on treadmills, and a bathroom, which consists of a row of fire hydrants. From there, a U-turn reveals the lab and, above it all, Lou’s office. Smith describes the décor, complete with NORAD-like surveillance monitors, as “a little retro, with a nod toward spy movies, and a lot of cool, small-scale furniture.”
Acknowledging cats’ affinity for small, enclosed hideaways, Smith based the MEOWS headquarters on the popular cat condo design. It was particularly challenging because of its small scale, only 6-to-8 feet high, and spherical shape. “Everyone had to crouch down to work in it,” he laughs. At the same time, he had to be mindful of leaving enough access for the puppeteers to maneuver, with raised platforms or other creative access routes on all the sets, wherever possible. The crew especially had fun with creative prop ideas, littering both sets with items like dog- and cat-treat vending machines and customized computer keyboards.
For one of the major set pieces, Mr. Tinkles’ big prison scene, Smith accompanied Brad Peyton and the screenwriters to Alcatraz for a sense of its layout and tone. Because filming there is prohibited, they shot exteriors at Riverview, near Vancouver, Canada, to double for the facility’s outer wall, and built the interior set on a stage.
Costumes for the animal actors further extended the theme that it was business-as-usual in this realm where cats and dogs rule. The four-legged stars were appropriately decked out in a variety of workaday ensembles, from shirts and ties to lab coats and motorcycle jackets. Costume designer Tish Monaghan refers to the wardrobe range as “the ridiculous to the sublime, with business wear at one end and Kitty Galore’s costumes and the miniature Hannibal Lecter outfit at the far end of the spectrum.”
With an emphasis on the animals’ comfort, Monaghan consulted the trainers and used a lot of soft and stretchy material, saying, “We wanted them to be able to shine with their personalities coming through and not be hampered by the clothing.”
Whenever we see the world where dogs and cats can be themselves and drop their pet pretense, Peyton wanted it to look as if it was entirely designed and built by them. When they’re interacting in our world, they have to accommodate themselves to human scale and expectations, but it’s always with the implied knowledge that there is more going on than we are aware of, with our limited senses and human-centric perspective.
“What we wanted to do with this movie was deepen the mythology introduced in ‘Cats & Dogs,’ about a world of spies and counterspies and all the intrigue and drama playing out among our trusted household pets every day, while we think they’re napping,” he says. “But you don’t have to have seen ‘Cats & Dogs’ to be in on the joke. ‘The Revenge of Kitty Galore’ is a stand-alone adventure.”
It could also be, as Andrew Lazar suggests, “A wake-up call to those of us who share our lives with cats and dogs, to maybe think twice about what they’re really doing when we’re not around.”
 Production notes provided by Warner Bros. Pictures. |
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